Many breathtaking specters have descended upon the Bates campus in recent years, but few can top the apparition of Chairman Mao cloaked in his legendary, larger-than-life jacket.

We are told that this piece of public art was the creation of a sculptor both famous and influential in his home country of the People’s Republic of China.

But what makes an artist famous and influential in that country? And on which side of that fame and influence do he, the artist, and Bates, his host, stand?

Sui Jianguo’s sculpture “Legacy Mantle (Mao Jacket)” sits on Alumni Walk shortly after its December 2008 installation. On loan, the work graced the campus for a year. Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College

The question is tantalizing because Chairman Mao was once a political and ideological sworn enemy of the college’s homeland and because his historical significance is still being fought over passionately. The “public” of this art we have on hand is indeed “political.”

Or perhaps I am missing something. Perhaps Chairman Mao has transcended political and ideological divides the world over, now that his country has become downright capitalist. Perhaps it’s just the folly of morons stuck in the political, ideological, and precapitalist past to argue fine points. If we forget about Tibet and the Dalai Lama, the College may even receive a gift of an endowed Chairman Mao chair in a well-placed department.

After all, Chairman Mao was not such a thoroughgoing revolutionary in his lifetime. In the biography Mao: The Unknown Story, we learn that in Yan’an, the famous Chinese Communist hideout, the local cotton was rough and uncomfortable, “so softer cotton was imported for senior cadres. Mao, outwardly, dressed the same as the rest, but his underwear was made of fine material…. The maid did not qualify for any underwear or socks at all, and kept getting colds as a result.”

Does our own Mao jacket include his underwear made of fine material? It’s been frightfully cold lately.

The reaction on campus that I like most came from our own students. Two women stood in front of the jacket and pondered its identity. After some deliberation, they decided it looked like a Chanel suit.

Bravo! Though I have never heard of cotton Chanel suits, perhaps the rusty metal jacket nestled against Pettengill Hall really does represent Communist Mao’s warm, fine outfit, suitable even for his capitalist offspring. Therein must lay the political correctness of this particular objet d’art.

Atsuko Hirai, the Kazushige Hirasawa Professor of History, joined the Bates faculty in 1988.

Campus reaction to Mao Jacket is a variant of what was expressed in the anonymous note that lay beside the sculpture until destroyed by rain: “Why is this man honored who killed so many of our men. Shame on our college.”

My guess is that if the piece were by a contemporary American sculptor, displayed a Western suit coat, and was titled George W. Bush, the near-universal reaction would be that representing the president as a rigid hollow metal shell was an act of savage critique.

Yet this work by contemporary Chinese artist Sui Jianguo has repeatedly been taken to be glorifying Mao in particular and communist rule in general, as if there could only be one Chinese thought pattern, irrevocably rooted in Marxism. My own suspicion is that, at this moment, it would be easier to find American artists praising George W. Bush without ironic intent than it would be to find Chinese artists wholeheartedly praising Mao Zedong.

Not surprisingly, it’s easier to perceive ambiguity in art that comes out of one’s own cultural background. Foreign political art, in particular, tends to be seen in terms of one’s own limited understanding of other people’s complications. When the sculpture stood in New York City, a critic asked angrily how it was different from displaying the jacket of a Waffen-SS officer, with the implication that such a display would be instantly stopped.

But what if the Nazi uniform sculpture bore the name of Anselm Kiefer, famous for a career built out of dark broodings on Germany’s poisonous modern history? Would that convert the sculpture into a horrific memorial warning, or would its straightforward representation still be inherently glorifying?

When Jasper Johns’ flag paintings are exhibited overseas, should they be equipped with warning labels reading, “May Not Be Simplistic Patriotic Statement,” to help out foreign viewers?

In the end, I’m inclined to think that if any significant percentage of the Bates student body actually looks hard at a piece of sculpture and develops personal opinions about it, that’s all good news.

By Dennis Grafflin

Professor of History Dennis Grafflin, the first permanent appointment in non-Western history, came to Bates in 1981.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2009/03/01/dennis-grafflin/feed/0Environmentalist to discuss 'Mao's War Against Nature'http://www.bates.edu/news/2001/04/12/mao-environment/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2001/04/12/mao-environment/#commentsThu, 12 Apr 2001 20:15:11 +0000http://home.bates.edu/?p=18878Mao's War Against Nature: The Lessons for Today Monday, April 30, in the Keck Classroom of Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road.]]>Environmentalist Judith Shapiro will discuss Mao’s War Against Nature: The Lessons for Today at 4 p.m. Monday, April 30, in the Keck Classroom (G52) of Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road. The public is invited to attend free of charge. Co-director of the masters degree program in environmental policy at the School of International Service, American University, Shapiro is the author of Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. The book describes how the Chinese ideal of “harmony between heaven and humans” was abrogated in favor of Mao’s insistence that “man must conquer nature.”

Mao and the Chinese Communist Party’s “war” to bend the physical world to human will often had disastrous consequences both for human beings and the natural environment. Shapiro’s account, told in part through the voices of average Chinese citizens and officials who lived through and participated in some of the destructive campaigns, shows how the abuse of people and nature were often linked. Today, as human beings struggle to find a more harmonious relationship with the natural world, the book offers a cautionary tale with wide-ranging implications.

Shapiro is also co-author, with Liang Heng, of other well-known books on China, including Son of the Revolution, a memoir of the Cultural Revolution; After the Nightmare, an eyewitness account of China after Mao; and Cold Winds, Warm Winds , a discussion of freedom of expression in the reform period. Son of the Revolution has been translated into more than 20 languages and has sold more than 100,000 copies in English. Shapiro’s co-edited volumes include Debates on the Future of Communism and A Handbook of Current Americanisms.

Shapiro has also taught courses on contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania, Villanova University, the New School for Social Research and the University of Aveiro in Portugal. She recently lectured in China on the role of environmental non-governmental organizations for the U.S. Department of State.

One of the first Americans to work in China after the normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, Shapiro taught journalism and literature to more than 600 students and faculty in Changsha, Hunan, from 1979 to 1981. Her marriage to a Chinese literature student helped launch a career as a writer and commentator on Chinese issues. Other professional experience has included co-founding and writing grants for The Chinese Intellectual, a Chinese language scholarly quarterly circulated in China and the West intended to encourage China’s development toward a more open society. Shapiro also worked from 1992 to 1994 as senior program officer for Asia at the National Endowment for Democracy and from 1988 to 1991 as a resident scholar on China at the Foreign Policy Institute in Philadelphia. Fluent in Chinese, she has served as a contract interpreter in federal courts in New York and Washington, D.C.

In mid career, Shapiro returned to school to train herself in global environmental politics. She completed a doctorate in international relations at American University, a masters in Asian studies from the University of California at Berkeley and a masters in comparative literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana. She received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology and East Asian studies from Princeton University.